This could be great news. There again, it could ruin your day. There’s a national shortage of Marmite. “Panic spreads among Marmite lovers as supplies dwindle, “ headlined this morning’s Times: It seems that the reduction in beer-making during the pandemic has markedly reduced the supply of yeast, the key ingredient in its manufacture by Unilever. Marmite, of course, is a national treasure – even though it was invented by a German scientist at the end of the 19th centu

So 4th March came and went – and Joe Biden is still POTUS. The chances are you don’t know what I am talking about but I am referring to the prediction made by QAnon a crazed conspiracy cult, that Donald Trump would be reinstalled as President on this day. (He wasn’t.) I will spare you the details but QAnon claims (and here I paste from Wikipedia) a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic paedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotted again

The conservatives are the liberals while the liberals are now the conservatives! It’s all about the importance of church buildings, the geographical location of church congregations at a place on a map, over against the growing importance of cyberspace, the world of interconnected digital technology. All this has come to the fore during the current Lockdown as churches have variously resorted to Zoom, Facebook and YouTube (or a combination of all three) for worship, teachin

“Love without risk is an impossibility, like war without death.” It’s not often that I quote contemporary left-bank French philosophers, especially those who write what is to me impenetrable prose. However, I have just come across the work of Alain Badiou, apparently considered the most important living French philosopher. The big surprise is that even though Badiou is most clearly an atheist (no surprise there) his understanding of the apostle Paul is astonishingly help

Hi folks, “Lord, I just don’t understand this.” Over the years I’ve prayed this prayer many times during my daily Bible reading. For whatever reason a particular passage or verse just doesn’t fit in with my understanding of how God works in this world. Of course, we can try and work it out, having asked for (more) help from the Holy Spirit, even phoning a friend But there may well be a sense of trying to force it into to our intellectual jigsaw, making a piece fit when

As headlines go, it’s pretty stark. ONE BRIT DIES EVERY 13 MINUTES. The Sun, of course, has form when it comes to arresting headlines. You may remember how its headline GOTCHA on 4 May 1982, came to define the entire Falklands conflict. Headlines, of course, are designed to grab our attention (and our cash), condensing a major news story into a few pithy words. Above all, they set a tone. And today, the Sun seeks to alarm us. Certainly it stands out on the newsstands.

VIRUS PANIC! proclaims this morning’s Daily Mirror while at the other end of the news spectrum, the Financial Times, offers a longer headline “Virus triggers worst run on markets since financial crisis.” Increasingly the news – as well as our future – is being dominated by the spread of the coronavirus. “If this virus spreads, we are doomed,” tweets one Nigerian as his country registers its first victim of the virus. Contagion is a primitive terror. We instinctively rec

Y You had to laugh! I came in yesterday hoping to catch the BBC News at Six. However, no joy – our television wasn’t working. And then I remembered that Freeview TV had updated its signals and I needed to retune our tuner. No problem – press a few buttons and in five minutes or so, we were back in business. However, by then we had missed the main news and found ourselves watching North West Tonight to be told in the intro that later in the programme they would be showi